Lead users and the adoption and diffusion of new products: Insights from two extreme sports communities

Lead users are proposed as a valuable resource for marketers in terms of the (1) development, (2) adoption, and (3) diffusion of new products. We present the first consumer study to provide evidence that the latter two suggestions are justified. First, we find that lead users demonstrate stronger domain-specific innovativeness than more “ordinary” users. Second, lead users perceive new technologies as less “complex” and might therefore be better prepared to adopt them. Third, we find that lead users demonstrate stronger opinion leadership and weaker opinion seeking tendencies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the marketing of new products.     

Sponsorship effects on brand image: The role of exposure and activity involvement

Sponsorships capture a significant proportion of marketing budgets. In firm evaluations of the effectiveness of sponsorship engagements, image improvements represent the most important company objective. This study develops and tests a framework for explaining how exposure and activity involvement moderate the effects of event image, event–sponsor fit, and event commercialization on sponsor image. Using empirical data collected at a large sporting event with multiple sponsors, the authors show that increased sponsorship exposure reduces sponsor image if respondents perceive a low fit between the event and sponsor or high levels of event commercialization. Involvement in the sponsored activity improves the sponsor's image, in that the effect of event commercialization is positive for highly involved persons. This paper concludes with some reasons for the findings, implications for the choice and design of sponsorships, and further areas for research.     

Optimal pest control in greenhouse production of ornamental crops

In this study, we develop a conceptual bioeconomic model of floriculture production with aesthetic benefits, wherein optimal decision rules depend on an intertemporal economic objective to maximize profits subject to economic and biological processes. Necessary conditions of the model identify optimal trajectories (e.g., simultaneous, single, or cycling controls) that define decision rules and economic thresholds for profit maximizing growers producing crops with aesthetic attributes. The necessary conditions also highlight intertemporal trade‐offs between aesthetic benefits and expected future net benefits of arthropod stocks, which have important policy implications. The model is applied to the greenhouse production system of ivy geranium.     

Ökonomische Bewertung des Repowering von Onshore-Windenergieanlagen in Deutschland

Wind power takes a leading role among the renewable energy sources. Whereas in offshore wind power utilization large technical challenges still need to be tackled for commercial exploitation, the replacement of obsolete plants (repowering) in the onshore sector provides an interesting alternative. This paper first provides an overview of the technical, legal and social development concerning wind power utilization in general, and repowering in particular, in Germany. In a next step, by means of model-based analysis, the technical potential for wind power by means of repowering is determined. The theoretical potential is valuated against social aspects. Due to the large heterogeneity of candidate sites for repowering, general potential studies are not suitable for concrete investment decisions. Instead, a detailed economic feasibility study is required. In our study, we performed scenario analysis, also taking into account the repowering-specific risks. The parameter values varied are those for the quality of the site, the size of the wind park, and the age of the wind turbines to be replaced. Finally, we discuss the results and provide an outlook on the development of repowering in light of the novelized EEG. We find that, until now, the repowering potential could not be fully exploited. An intensified realization of repowering projects in the coming years can be expected, due to the technical potential, simplifications in the commissioning process, rising acceptance on the side of the communities due to changes in the tax legislation and, above all, thanks to the incentives for almost all onshore wind parks.     

An empirical investigation of the sustainability of the public deficit in Portugal

In this paper, we investigate Portuguese government expenditures and revenues as an example for a long time series. Our hypothesis states that there may be periods when the deficit is sustainable and those when it is not. Usually, after a period of unsustainable deficits, a new regime takes over. These regime shifts call for an approach that takes into account a non-constant structure of the underlying data generating process. Consequently, we use different tests which we set up in a time-varying framework. We apply and compare the results of the Trace test, Breitung’s non-parametric test and the Bohn test. We identify several break points and find that the Trace test performs worst in this case while Breitung’s test and the Bohn test give similar results. Comparing the results with history, we find that the last two tests best reflect what happened historically.     

Editorial—The Macroeconomics of EMU: Policy Rules and International Implications

Open Economies Review -     

Extending Lead‐User Theory: Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Lead Userness*

Lead users are found to come up with commercially attractive user innovations and have been shown to be a highly promising source of innovation for new product development tasks. According to lead‐user theory, these users are defined as being ahead of an important market trend and experiencing high benefits from innovating. The present article extends lead‐user theory by exploring the antecedents and consequences of consumers' lead userness in the course of three studies on extreme sports communities. Regarding antecedents, it uncovers that field‐related variables (consumer knowledge and use experience) as well as field‐independent personality variables (locus of control and innovativeness) help explain an individual's lead userness. These variables might therefore be used as a proxy to identify the rare species of lead users. With regard to consequences, it uncovers that lead users demonstrate innovative behavior not only by creating new product ideas but also by adopting new commercial products more heavily and faster than ordinary users. This highlights the idea that lead users might not only be valuable to idea‐generation processes for radically new concepts; instead, they might also be relevant to more general issues in the marketing of new products.